The Swazi media, particularly the newspapers and mostly the Times of Swaziland, got carried away by the show in which 12 young men and women were put together in a house, made to undertake tasks, had cameras watching them 24 hours a day, and then had viewers decide which ones of them they wanted to evict from the house. This went on and on for 98 days until there was only one ‘housemate’ standing. The winner got to go away with 100,000 US dollars (about 700,000 Swazi emalengeni).
Swazi journalists such as Nathi Gule, who writes a television review in the Times every Friday, thought BBA2 was the best thing since television was invented.
Although the media in Swaziland fell for BBA2, journalists elsewhere in Africa were more aware of that BBA2 was a confidence trick on ordinary Africans.
Daniel Soetan, writing last Saturday (17 November 2007) in the Nigerian newspaper Leadership, compared BBA2 with a previous ‘reality’ TV show called Gulder Ultimate Search. Soetan writes.
‘[Gulder Ultimate Search] was a TV Reality Show that x-rayed the true day-to-day life of average African people.
‘Gulder Ultimate Search was devoid of luxury, flamboyancy etc. No rooms fully air-conditioned, no gas cookers, and other quirths that an average African cannot afford.
‘How will you get an air-conditioner when your ordinary ceiling, standing or even table fan, as the case may be, would require generator to roll the blades?
‘What gas cooker? Can an average Nigerian afford it? My neighbours, even with the kerosene cooking stoves, still have to use charcoal burner to cook oftentimes. The poor family can’t cope with the hike in the price of kerosene.
‘In an hotel one day, during the early days of the just concluded Big Brother Africa, I watched the housemates testing the beautiful new clothes that had just been delivered to them by the organisers. Ask the participants of the Gulder Ultimate Search.
‘The BBA reality show, to an extent, suppresses the truth about the real African. How can you lock up some youths and have them live in a fake world? They briefly enjoy luxury, comfort, a high life style and rich nutritious food that some of them do not enjoy in their real world, only to evict them back into their real world of poverty and hustling.
‘They'll come out more angry, frustrated and aggressive than they went in with so much impatience and greed because they simply desire that it continues to be like it was in the Big Brother House.’
I agree with most of what Daniel Soetan writes but I think he misses an important point. BBA2 wasn’t meant to be about ‘average’ Africans. BBA2 went out on the satellite channel DSTV, a channel that most Swazis don’t watch because they can’t afford to. In Swaziland about 70 per cent of the population exist on less than one US dollar a day.
BBA2 is targeted at a very particular audience of young people. To be attractive to sponsors and advertisers the audience need to be in well paying jobs and have money to spend on the goods and services advertisers want to sell.
Advertisers who use television have trouble reaching younger adults, so BBA2 was aimed specifically at these kinds of people. BBA2 wants the audience to relate to the participants so they chose men and women to take part who come from a very narrow social demographic.
The 12 housemates ranged in ages from 21 to 30-years old, but most of them were aged 23 to 28. They didn’t have run-of-the-mill jobs in the real world. Two described themselves as ‘authors’, one was a model and actress, another was a fashion designer and yet another was a ‘radio personality’. This range of occupations is hardly typical of the average African.
Only countries with people who have money to attract advertisers were allowed to take part. Swazis were not invited to audition for a place in the house because not enough people in the kingdom subscribe to DSTV. Swazis are just too poor.
I’ll leave the final word for today on BBA2 to Ambrose Nuwagira, writing in the New Vision newspaper, Uganda.
‘What has this show portrayed? That life is all about manipulation, hypocrisy, and exploitation, whereby the most clinical in these will always win. This is a blatant lie.
‘To the African child, the biggest question in the last 98 days has been what can an African do for $100,000? The answers were just manifesting on the TV screens; hatred, envy, greed and infidelity.
‘There is absolutely nothing African about big brother.
‘Big brother is a sign of moral degeneration, greed, and gluttony. Africans have a sense of decency, shame, honour, dignity and moral sensibility. These are two contrasting situations. Now that they have broken the codes of decency, have made adultery look attractive and, of recent, portrayed fidelity as insignificant, what will be the next item on stage in an era where HIV/AIDS rates are increasing and vices like homosexuality trying to hold ground? Big Brother Africa portrays high corporate social irresponsibility and has offered our society a disservice.’
See Also
WATCHING BIG BROTHER
READING BIG BROTHER
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